To be fair, career services gave some people bad advice. Dean DeRosa and most of the rest of the career services staff have been out of the game for a while, so they don't always give the best advice. I know that they gave me some advice that was totally wrong and I was lucky that it didn't end up screwing me over. Just because some people don't have jobs doesn't mean they're retarded, some people just got bad advice and had shitty luck on top of it. AJF is a total shit show and it's almost impossible to know how it will turn out until you're done with callbacks.

If you're at liberty to do so, could you please elaborate?

Career services is good for some things: they set you up with mock interviews, check your resume, and review bid lists, etc. The staff also seems to care about Cornell students and responds relatively quickly to emails and messages.

However, in my experience, you need to be proactive and reach out to career services for them to really be useful. For example, I had to reach out to them twice before they scheduled me a with a mock interview (that I had tried to schedule months in advance). If I hadn't reached out to them, they woundn't have gotten back to me at all. I also sent them my resume for review multiple times and it didn't really look like they actually went over it until the second or third time I sent it (the first time they sent it back to me it actually had a glaring typo in it that they didn't catch). I also had a friend who sent in a resume and Dean DeRosa literally sent an email back saying "Looks good" when, in reality, the resume needed work and had multiple typos. Moral of the story: Use career services, but don't rely on them. Instead, consult career services and rely on your own good judgment.

The friends I have who got screwed at AJF told me that career services gave them bad advice while reviewing their bid lists. My friends were within the GPA ranges for the firms that they bid on, but on the lower end of the spectrum and career services OK'd their bid lists. On the one hand, that was bad judgment on my friends' part. However, on the other hand, according to them, they bid poorly because career services told them their bid list was fine. This is just one example of where your own good judgment should come in. To do well at AJF, apart from talking to career services, I would suggest doing the following: talk to as many 2L/3Ls as you can, reach out to 2Ls, 3Ls, and alums who work at firms you are interested in working at, and consult TLS (seriously). This thread is particularly helpful: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=163550

The bad advice that I got from career services was to bid on 4 or 5 firms that had practice areas that I already had WE in. I was within all of the firms' GPA ranges, but I got to my interviews and the recruiters did not care AT ALL about my WE. There were other firms that were safer bets that I didn't bid on because of career services' advice. So, if you're not IP, it may not be wise to bid on firms based on WE. If you want more details, feel free to PM me.

Edit: Another horrible piece of advice I got from Dean DeRosa was to not mass mail before AJF. He literally told me that I shouldn't mass mail because it would be a complete waste of time (and I don't have amazing stats). I mass mailed anyway and I'm glad I did because I had a plan b in case AJF didn't work out and also gained some new contacts in my secondary market. I know of other people who followed his advice and had to start mass mailing post-AJF after they struck out. Some are still jobless.

To agree with Bullshitwithbravado, mass mailing prior to AJF is definitely the way to go. AJF may or may not work out for you, but there is no harm in mass mailing whatever market you will be in during your 1L summer. In the worst case, you get valuable experience interviewing and selling yourself to a legal employer. In the best case, you get multiple callbacks/offers prior to rolling into AJF.

masked kavana wrote:How difficult is it to come back to SF from Cornell?

I'm really interested in going but am afraid of the disadvantage that being so far away puts me in.

Also, if anyone is going the PI route, how are the job prospects in that area?

Thank you!

There are always a few people in each class who go back to CA for Big Law and I know people who did public interest there for their 1L summer. Not sure about public interest prospects for 2L summer and after graduation though, but it seems that going to school in NY won't really negatively impact your chances.

masked kavana wrote:How difficult is it to come back to SF from Cornell?

I'm really interested in going but am afraid of the disadvantage that being so far away puts me in.

Also, if anyone is going the PI route, how are the job prospects in that area?

Thank you!

PI in the bay area is really very competitive. A lot of legal employment is about networking etc. and unfortunately we just don't have that many alums in PI in general. The main thing about Bay Area PI is that it is flooded with berkeley people and they have a pretty tight alumni network. If you want more detailed info feel free to pm.

I signed up for AJF on the very last day to do so and was really not sure I wanted to go at all. My parents talked me into just giving it a shot. SO I mostly blame myself for my poor performance, that being said career services really wasn't that helpful.

My grades weren't great and it kinda felt like I was written off, but hearing what bswb said, it sounds like they were just kinda flaky in general. It took forever to get any appointments and most of them just really weren't that helpful. Also I had an error on my resume that was really bad (think something like the last 20% of the resume just wasn't typed and it was clear that I had stopped and planned to work on it later and didn't.) If I was an interviewer and had read my resume I would've dinged myself too. I just trusted that career service had looked at my resume when they told me it looked good and I didn't look at it again.

Obviously I should have looked at my resume again but still it was clear that they just didn't look at it and that just kinda sucks.

but I want to add that the Public Interest career service people are absolutely fantastic. They didn't seem that helpful for 1L job stuff but for 2L they were incredible. I had multiple phone meetings with them over summer that I was able to schedule super easily and it actually felt like they prepared for these meetings. I think because they have so few students that they are helping they are able to really spend a lot of time with each individual.

Could I ask you about the employment situation? What happens to Cornell students who can't get BigLaw? Do most students get jobs they are satisfied with? How bad an effect has the recession had on hiring? Can a Cornell student conceivably compete against students from NYU and Columbia? Is there a GPA cut-off where a Cornell student would be "dead in the water?"

Thanks so much. Sorry for the long question. I love Cornell and have no doubts about the impressive quality of education. I am only concerned about job prospects in this legal atmosphere.